


Talking In Bed

by novemberhush



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Fluff, It's amazing what can happen when you finally stop dancing round the elephant in the room, Johnlock - Freeform, Love Confessions, M/M, and some kissing, finally talking about their feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-17
Updated: 2016-11-17
Packaged: 2018-08-31 13:23:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8580217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/novemberhush/pseuds/novemberhush
Summary: John and Sherlock have finally made it to the bedroom. The question now is, can they talk about their pasts, their feelings and their hopes for the future at long last?After all, the poet wrote, 'Talking in bed ought to be easiest', not that it is.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! Just a quick little something that came to me as I was lounging in bed on Sunday morning. Sadly with neither a John or a Sherlock (or both!) lounging with me! ;-)
> 
> The title comes from the poem of the same name, by Philip Larkin, one of my favourite poets. I also quote from the poem in the story. And, yes, the full poem is a lot sadder than my story (hopefully!). I hope you enjoy. :-)

“You’ve been holding out on me, Sherlock Holmes,” John murmured in Sherlock’s ear, as he nosed at the curls at his temple, voice low, beguiling, and just a little bit … dangerous?

  
Sherlock lay on his stomach, head languid on clasped hands; warm, sated, he felt pleasingly tender in all the right places and thoroughly tasted all over. A little sore perhaps, but in the best possible way - and a lot scared, assuredly in the worst. Scared by the possibility John might regret what they had just done. From he knew not where a few lines of poetry floated to the surface of his mind. Larkin, if memory served. _Talking in bed ought to be easiest/ Lying together there goes back so far/ An emblem of two people being honest._

  
John had said Sherlock had been holding out on him. Did he think Sherlock had been dishonest in some way? Tentatively, he cracked open the eye nearest the good doctor, wondering where John was going with this line of talk. Sherlock couldn’t be sure yet, his brain still too drunk on the cocktail of chemicals it and his body had just released to be up to deducing _anything_ right now, much less the riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma that was the Sphinx John Watson.

Weighing his options as quickly as his hitherto blissed out but now increasingly panicked state would allow he concluded his best course of action was to aim for light, teasing. Playful, even. Isn’t that what people sought in their … what? Boyfriend? Lover? Bed partner? There could be little doubt they were currently the last on that list, cocooned as they were in each other’s orbit and Sherlock’s bed, the taste of each still fresh in the other’s mouth.

  
“After everything we just did together I wouldn’t have thought either one of us could ever again be accused of ‘holding out’ on the other, John. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  
“Well, yes,” John smiled, dipping down to drop a kiss on Sherlock’s bare shoulder where a few rays of the fading afternoon light still danced, unwilling to give up the ghost just yet, clinging to the creamy skin like lovers in the night.

  
“But what I meant,” he said, sobering, “…was that that was definitely not your first time doing … that.”

  
“Nor yours, evidently,” Sherlock responded, quirking an eyebrow. “Your point?”

  
“Well, it’s just that … Well, I…,”

  
“Well?” Sherlock prompted, somewhat impatiently. If John was having regrets now, after the event, after they’d _finally_ … well, it was better Sherlock find out now. Before he fell any deeper. He almost laughed then, realising how idiotic that thought was. He’d fallen for John, in more ways than one, long ago. He was still falling, deeper and deeper, over and over again, every day. He was already so far in over his head that a rejection from John, whether it be now or thirty years from now, would devastate him completely.

  
“Well, I always thought this wasn’t your area. You said…”

  
“If I recall correctly, John, I said _girlfriends_ weren’t my area.”

  
“Yes, all right, I’ll give you that. You did say that. But…,”

  
“But what?” Sherlock enquired, barely managing to clamp down on the eye roll he so desperately wanted to give free reign. “Really, John, if this is the effect sex has on you, leaves you unable to form complete sentences, perhaps we should refrain in future.”

  
The look of panic that crossed John’s face was almost as gratifying as the sex had been, Sherlock mused. _Almost_.

  
He smirked and winked to let his other half (oh, yes, that worked, that title fit. Sherlock liked that one. His other half. His _better_ half.) know he was joking.

  
He didn’t miss the look of relief that crossed that oh so lovely face either.

  
“It’s just, I always thought you had never wanted this, never wanted anyone,… wanted _me_ ,” John’s voice faltered and Sherlock yearned to erase the doubt he heard there, to take the absurd thought he had never wanted John and banish it from that beloved head evermore.

  
“And now I find there have been others after all. I’ve been pining over you, mooning around after you for years, afraid to make a move, afraid it would alarm you, and…”

  
“Sex doesn’t alarm me, John. It never has. I would have thought this afternoon’s activities were proof enough of that.”

  
“Right. Well, yes. Quite,” John fumbled and blushed, rather charmingly Sherlock thought, ducking his head with a shy but Sherlock would have said pleased little smile.

  
“But, then, why did it take so long? For us, I mean.” John looked up again and spoke without falter this time, suddenly determined, set on getting an answer. His eyes were clear and true, all that blue breathtakingly focussed on Sherlock.

  
But then those same eyes dropped and the strong, confident voice wavered on the next question.

  
“Were there others while we were together?” He glanced up at Sherlock, then quickly down again. “I mean, not that we were _together_ , together. But after we met, were you still sleeping with others?”

  
He risked another glance at Sherlock before retreating again.

  
“God, listen to me. Forget I asked. Forget I said anything,” he back-pedalled. “It’s not fair of me to ask, to expect… I mean, I didn’t exactly start living like a monk the moment we met. Christ, if anything, I went out looking for it _more_ than I ever had before. Like I had something to prove. I guess I did, in a way. But I was just trying to…”

  
“Pretend you didn’t have feelings for me? Forget about me? Get me out of your system?” Sherlock finished for him, shifting closer, pressing his forehead against John’s, where he felt the answering nod.

  
“Yes,” John breathed.

  
“Idiot,” Sherlock intoned fondly, no bite to it whatsoever. “As if you could ever get me out of your system.”

  
John laughed, soft and loving.

  
“Yes, God forbid anyone should get over the great Sherlock Holmes.”

  
“That’s not what I meant,” Sherlock replied, wrapping his arm around John’s waist and pulling him closer, the collision of naked skin sending shivers of desire cascading through both of them.

  
“I meant we are so entwined, John, so thoroughly _connected_ to each other, that we have become one. Quite literally, just a few minutes ago. But figuratively over the past seven years. You are a part of me, as I am a part of you. There is no severing that connection. No getting out of each other’s system. We are a shared system. We are irrevocably joined, John. We are one. _One_.”

  
The words were barely out of Sherlock’s mouth before John had surged forward and made the statement fact, joining them in a deep, passionate kiss Sherlock felt in his bones. He was only too eager to merge with the compact, courageous captain of his heart, who felt so right in his arms, like he was another part of him. A part that had lain dormant until a chance remark to a mutual friend had set in motion a meeting that would forever change both John and Sherlock’s lives. A part that had come alive only to be struck down by a separation of two years; a part that had throbbed with the pain of a phantom limb until that separation had ended. Only to be injured again when Sherlock had returned to find an interloper in his place, by John’s side, in John’s arms, wearing his ring, taking his name, bearing his child.

  
But that was over now. The interloper gone for good and the child ensconced in the makeshift nursery of John’s room. The _permanent_ nursery in John’s _former_ room, Sherlock couldn’t help but hope now, given this most recent turn of events, he and John no longer dancing round the elephant in the room, but falling into each other’s arms (and Sherlock’s bed) at long last. They were finally one in every way. The way they had always been meant to be.

  
When they came up for air again, though, Sherlock knew John’s mind would never be at rest until Sherlock had answered his query.

  
“Yes, John, I was not as pure as the driven snow before today. That much you have gathered. It has never been sex that alarmed me, but emotion. You cannot begin to fathom, then, how terrified I was by you, by everything you awoke in me. So many feelings; so much emotion. I was drowning in it, lost in a sea of trepidation, adrift in my own terrible confusion and senseless doubts. And just as I had spotted land and found the strength to swim to it, to _you_ , waiting for me on the shore, you, my own one constant little patch of terra firma, at last ready to face my feelings and fears … well, you know what happened. No need to dwell on the past now, not when we have a whole wonderful future ahead of us. But, in answer to your question, no, there has been no one since the day we met. There will never be anyone again. Only you. As for the others before you, I can only, and honestly, say that if you were to take your gun and put it to my head right now, I couldn’t, under penalty of death, name one of them, or conjure up their faces, their bodies, or anything else about them.”

  
“Ah, so you deleted them,” John smiled, a little sadly, Sherlock thought. _The idiot! He’s worried I’m going to do the same to him one day! Hasn’t he been listening to a bloody word I said?!_

  
“No, John! Don’t you see! _I_ didn’t delete them! You did! _You_ , John! You erased the memory of every single one of them! The first time I saw your face I instantly forgot all of theirs. Every time you look at me I can barely remember my own name, let alone anyone else’s. When you so much as brush your fingers against mine when passing me the morning paper or my evening tea I can’t remember a single touch but yours. With every kiss today, with every caress and sigh and moan, you have obliterated the memory of anyone who dared come before you. You have eradicated them entirely. You have consumed me, John. I have been yours, and only yours, from the moment we met. I shall remain yours until death. If you’ll have me.”

  
“ _Sherlock_ …,” John’s voice was a hoarse whisper, choked with that which Sherlock had once found so fearful and abhorrent, but which on John was precious and beautiful. Emotion. So much emotion. And all of it centred on Sherlock.

  
John swallowed, cleared his throat and began again.

  
“Of course I’ll bloody have you. I love you, Sherlock Holmes.”

  
“As I, you, John Watson.”

  
They lay there for a moment, Sherlock’s arm around John, his hand drifting slowly up and down his back. John’s hands cradling Sherlock’s face, thumbs gliding softly back and forth over his cheekbones. Staring into each other’s eyes, breathing each other in. Then John frowned.

  
“What? What is it?” Sherlock asked, concern springing up in him, unbidden.

  
“It’s nothing,” John demurred, shaking his head.

  
“It’s not nothing,” Sherlock shot back. “It’s quite patently _something_. Out with it, John! Come now, we’re lying naked in each other’s arms after doing all manner of things to, and with, each other! This is hardly the time to be coy!”

  
“It’s just…,”

  
“Yes?” Sherlock prodded.

  
“When you say ‘their names’, 'their faces’, 'their bodies’, well, it sounds like there were rather a lot of them. I was just wondering … how many.”

  
“John Hamish Watson! Are you … are you asking me what my _number_ is?? I mean, I knew you were the jealous sort, but don’t you think you’re taking it a little too far now?? We both have a past, John! We’re both grown ups! It was unlikely either of us was the first. Sexually, at least. Isn’t it enough to know you’re the first I’ve ever loved? The only…”

  
Sherlock was cut off abruptly by a sudden peal of laughter emanating from the man he was currently wrapped around, whose dark blue eyes twinkled with mischief and merriment. Realisation dawned, swift and hard, on the consulting detective.

  
“You…! _You_ …!”

  
“Yes?” John teased. “Really, Sherlock, if this is the effect sex has on you, leaves you unable to form complete sentences, perhaps we should refrain in future.”

  
The peal of laughter had now settled into something halfway between a giggle and a chuckle. Sherlock couldn’t help the smile that tugged at his own lips, but he swatted John’s arm lightly, just to show he wasn’t entirely amused.

  
“You bastard. I genuinely thought you were trying to … oh, what was that term they used on that dreadful daytime television show Mrs. Hudson was watching the other day? You know, the one with all the menopausal women sitting about, throwing around buzzwords in a desperate attempt to seem au courant?”

  
Sherlock scowled, sifting through the memory of a few afternoons previously, before hitting on the right one, the proverbial lightbulb going off before John’s very eyes.

  
“Oh yes, _slut shame_ me!”

  
John giggled once more, before tugging him closer, this sublime, ridiculous man he loved, laughter subsiding as his mouth teased along Sherlock’s jaw, up over his chin, settling finally on his lips, nipping gently at the Cupid’s bow of the upper one.

  
“Never, Sherlock,” he whispered. “You’re mine now, and I’m yours, and that’s all that matters.”

  
“Precisely,” Sherlock muttered, mollified, against the tender lips, placing soft, velvety kisses on his own.

  
“Precisely,” John hummed in agreement, and proceeded to set about making them one all over again, refractory period be damned.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, again! Thanks for reading. If you feel like saying hi, I'd love to hear from you, in either the comments section, or on tumblr, where I'm also known as novemberhush. I promise I don't bite! :-)


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